Carry it, in almost every case. A finished suit in a garment bag on your arm survives a flight better than any packing method, costs nothing, and removes the risk of a parcel going astray with something that exists only in your size. Shipping is the right answer for bulk, for a garment finished after you leave, or when you are travelling on somewhere else first.
How to pack a jacket
Fold it shoulder-inside-shoulder, lining out, once at the waist. That is the fold that keeps the shoulders intact, it takes about a minute, and it is what to do when the jacket cannot travel on your arm.
- Turn one shoulder inside out. Hold the jacket by the shoulders, facing you, and push your hand inside one shoulder to invert it.
- Nest the other shoulder into it. Fold the jacket in half vertically and slide the outward shoulder inside the inverted one, so the two shoulder pads sit inside each other. The lining is now on the outside.
- Smooth the lapels flat against each other so no edge is folded against the grain.
- Fold once horizontally, at the waist rather than the middle. A fold at the waist falls where the jacket already creases when you sit.
- Lay it on top of everything else in the case, never underneath. Weight on a folded jacket is what sets a crease permanently.
- Fill the hollows with soft items — socks, a t-shirt — so the jacket is supported rather than compressed.
- Fold the trousers along their own crease and lay them flat beside it, not rolled.
The lining-out fold protects the outer cloth from abrasion and keeps the shoulders from being crushed, which is the one damage that cannot be pressed out afterwards.
Carrying versus shipping
Carrying wins on cost and speed, shipping wins on bulk and on anything finished after you leave. Seven things separate them.
| Carrying it | Shipping it | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Nothing, or a garment bag | Quoted per parcel |
| Risk | Creasing, which presses out | Loss or delay, which does not |
| Speed | Immediate | Days to weeks |
| Best when | You are flying home directly | You have more onward travel, or bulk |
| Multiple garments | Awkward past two or three | The obvious answer |
| Finished after you leave | Not possible | The reason it exists |
| Final fitting | You have had it | You have not — earlier fittings matter more |
The last row is the one worth weighing. Shipping is a good answer to a schedule problem and a poor answer to a fit problem, so it works best when the earlier fittings went cleanly and the remaining work is finishing rather than shaping. How much time each route actually needs is worked through in how long a tailored suit takes.
Customs, honestly
Personal clothing carried in your luggage is ordinarily treated as personal effects rather than as goods, and most travellers bringing home a suit or two experience nothing at all. That is the general shape of it, and it is as far as anyone who is not a customs broker should go.
What is worth doing regardless: keep the receipt, and keep it accessible rather than in the hold. If you are asked what something is worth, a document beats a recollection. Allowances, thresholds and rules differ by country, change without notice, and depend on things like how long you have been away and whether you are a resident — so check your own country’s customs website before you fly rather than relying on any general account, including this one. We do not give customs or tax advice and nothing here is a substitute for it. If you are shipping rather than carrying, ask the carrier what documentation they need, because a commercial parcel is treated differently from luggage.
The first hour at home
Take the garment out of the bag or case as soon as you arrive. A jacket left folded overnight after a long flight sets creases that take real work to remove.
Hang it on a broad, shaped hanger — the wire ones from a dry cleaner will deform the shoulders over time — and leave it somewhere with air moving. Most travel creasing falls out on its own within a day. If it does not, hang it in a steamy bathroom rather than reaching for an iron; wool responds to steam and moisture and is easily damaged by direct heat, which leaves a shine that does not come out. Give it a day before you decide anything is wrong with the fit, because cloth compressed in a case does not sit properly until it has relaxed.
Ordering again from where you live
Once you have been measured here, your pattern and measurements stay on file, so the second garment can be ordered from home and shipped to you — you do not need to fly back to buy your second suit, and most people do not realise it is available. Bodies change, so you will be asked to confirm a couple of measurements before anything is cut, which is a short conversation rather than a repeat of the first appointment.
That makes the first trip the one that matters. The measuring and the fittings are what take the time, and once the pattern is right, everything after it is cloth choice and a message. If something is not right after you have gone home, adjustments against the pattern we hold can often be handled remotely too. The process that produces that pattern is set out in how a fitting works here, and the practical arrangements are easiest to sort out directly — where to find us in Bangtao has the details.
What a repeat order costs
The garment price does not change because you are ordering from abroad — it is the same cloth and the same work, quoted the same way, and what a garment costs here is the same page a walk-in customer reads. Shipping is quoted separately, per parcel, at the time of the order rather than built into the figure, so you can see exactly what the distance is costing you. For readers comparing this against their home market, that separation is the useful part: the garment is the garment, and the freight is a line you can weigh on its own.